uhh, wrong Kennedy

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

That's the reason why it's so dangerous.

If they die believing the lies .... to them, up to the moment of their death, they would have never been wrong.

I think we've all experienced this to one degree or another.

It's why I'm so baffled by people who can't recognize it in others.

Yeah, maybe you wouldn't let it go so far. But the process is familiar.

Why is it easier to justify another person's irrationality as something completely foreign to your human experience rather than something familiar?

For me, it's so much easier to say "they're just like me if I were a little stupider, more insecure, and much more proud."